About

Welcome to PSR's Environmental Health Policy
Institute, where we ask questions -- then we ask the experts to
answer them. Join us as physicians, health professionals,
and environmental health experts share their ideas, inspiration, and
analysis about toxic chemicals and environmental health policy.

I. Leslie Rubin, MD

I. Leslie Rubin MD is President and Founder of the Institute for the Study of Disadvantage and Disability (ISDD), Research Associate Professor in the Department of Pediatrics at Morehouse School of Medicine in Atlanta, Georgia, and Co-director of the Southeast Pediatric Environmental Health Unit (PEHSU) in the Department of Pediatrics at Emory University, Atlanta, Georgia, and Medical Director of Developmental Pediatric Specialists in Atlanta.

Dr. Rubin is originally from South Africa, where he trained in Pediatrics; he immigrated to the USA in 1976. He was initially at the Hospitals of the Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio. In 1980 he moved to The Children’s Hospital in Boston and the Harvard Medical School where he spent 14 years. He is now in Atlanta, Georgia. He is a Developmental Pediatrician who is committed to serving children and adults with developmental disabilities, their families, and their communities with a particular focus on the environmental impact of social and economic factors on the health, growth, and development of children.

Since 1998 he has been involved with the Southeast Pediatric Environmental Health Specialty Unit at the School of Public Health at Emory, where he has integrated his understanding of Developmental Disabilities and applied this to populations of children who had been exposed to adverse environmental circumstances particularly in the city of Anniston, Alabama. This experience was a formative factor in his academic and professional development. In May, 2004, he founded the Institute for the Study of Disadvantage and Disability, which is dedicated to improving awareness and understanding of the relationship between social and economic disadvantage and disabilities in children. He has also been collaborating with colleagues in Chile since 2006, promoting children’s environmental health in that country.

His research projects include Break the Cycle of Environmental Health Disparities, one goal of which is to cultivate future leaders to address the challenges of health disparities; Healthcare without Walls, which looks at creating a Medical Home for Homeless Children; and Project GRANDD, which serves grandparents of low income minority communities who are the primary care givers for their grandchildren with disabilities.

He has a number of publications. Most significantly, he is the co-editor, with Allen Crocker, of Delivery of Medical Care for Children and Adults with Developmental Disabilities, 2nd Edition, and of Safe and Healthy School Environments, Oxford University Press, with his colleagues at the Pediatric Environmental Health Specialty Unit at Emory: Howie Frumkin, Bob Geller, and Janice Nodvin.